Today, We March

The funereal mood of the Inauguration gave way to ebullience among the women and men making their way to Saturday’s protest in Washington, D.C.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHANNON STAPLETON / REUTERS

What’s the opposite of a miracle? “Nightmare” captures the mood, but, of course, we are awake. Debacle, perhaps. On Friday morning, we could watch, on TV, President Barack Obama taking his final moments in the Oval Office, bearing up with his usual decorum and decency, leaving the traditional letter for Donald Trump, the man who’d called him illegitimate, foreign, the founder of ISIS. On MSNBC, as Al Franken talked about Obama’s greatness and dignity, we saw images of Trump, in his red necktie, and Melania Trump, in her pale-blue coat, leaving St. John’s Church. Gray drizzle, the somewhat mournful sound of a choir, black S.U.V.s, grim security guys. Sights and sounds, and not just my mood, were funereal. Then, at the Capitol: live footage of Republicans of yore, men who’d disappeared from the scene—John Boehner, Dan Quayle, Bob Dole, Dick Cheney—filing in. Here was Reince Priebus; here was Jared Kushner, smirking. (If he can’t bring peace to the Middle East, who can?) The commentary on MSNBC turned to nepotism. The new President is a man whose greatest joy, not long ago, was to have people compete for his approval, on television, and to choose one and say, “You’re fired.” “It’s hard to fire your son-in-law,” Chris Matthews said. “But Mussolini had a great solution to that: he had him executed. So if I were Jared I’d be a little careful.”

“Jesus Christ!” Rachel Maddow said. “Well, all the people waiting for a mention of Mussolini have just started drinking.”

It was that kind of day. Providing solace and wistfulness, there were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, elegant and gracious, aging beautifully, having flown coach from Atlanta. And then there were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Hillary, in her white coat, looking grave.

My train to D.C. left at noon—the moment Trump would be sworn in. In a taxi to Penn Station, a young cabbie, who told me he’d been stabbed in the butt during the Egyptian revolution, said that he didn’t support Trump. But he also told me that women have more rights than men: having doors held for them, getting paid on maternity leave. “Half that baby is mine, right?” he said. “I don’t get paid!” When he asked what rights women don’t have—leaving aside equal pay and reproductive freedom, for some reason—and I said that women aren’t always respected or listened to enough, he told me I was wrong: men don’t listen to each other, either! When I got out, he wished me well, joyfully. He seemed to think we’d had a great conversation.

At Penn Station, women galore, and quite a few men, including an Amish family. I sat in the waiting room as Vice-President Mike Pence was sworn in. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, white faces, white coats, in red-and-blue plaid scarves, sang “America the Beautiful.” It sounded beautiful. But I felt like someone had died. “The stunning, uniform whiteness of the crowd is not lost on the rest of us who also make up the many communities of America,” Wajahat Ali tweeted.

The train to D.C. was full of women in pink knitted pussy hats, or, in one case, a pink N.Y.C. hat with makeshift tied ears. A woman behind me, with an accent, said, “Does everyone have a bandana? Let me explain why.” The get-ready-to-march sites had listed a bandana as a useful protest item: helpful to breathe through if there’s tear gas. Trump’s speech sounded like an eighties horror movie: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge,” he said. “And the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

It was a blessedly shorter version of his hour-plus R.N.C. screamfest, which did remind one of Mussolini—drink!—with the arm-waving, the fearmongering, the egotism. Here, speaking in aggrieved, angry, defiant undertones, he talked of “America first,” Charles Lindbergh style, and of protecting our borders “from the ravages of other countries,” the theft of our jobs, etc., and uniting “the civilized world”—yuck—against “radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate.” Trump has been less interested in security briefings than you might expect from a man who has grand designs on eradication.

Then he turned to another favorite topic: ripping stuff. “The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world,” he said. He’s always talking about ripping things—ripping babies from wombs, ripping up documents and health-care laws on “day one.” “America will start winning again, winning like never before,” sounding, once again, like Charlie Sheen during his “tiger blood” era. Trump kept raising a fist, like an inverse Black Panther salute in a world turned upside down.

At Metropark, the Marine band played in my headphones as a column of women in pink hats filed onto the train. Jackie Evancho, looking rather haunted, sang the national anthem. Obama, subdued, sang along; Michelle Obama looked grave. Then, for Donald Trump, a blast of John Philip Sousa. Wrong, wrong, wrong. On PBS, the conservative writer David Brooks said, “There will be many books written called ‘American Carnage.’ ” Trump had not shown humility about the immensity of his role or the challenge of its success, or about teamwork. He had not paid respect to Hillary Clinton, sitting a few feet away.

As the military helicopter prepared to lift the Obamas into the sky, I remembered, with a strange mix of emotions, my feeling when the Bushes got in the helicopter, eight years ago. Then I felt hope and joy—the triumphant beginning of the Obama era included the strange, visceral pleasure of seeing George W. Bush, that deeply flawed President, reluctant and overmatched by his role, plucked out of the whole scenario, airlifted off to Texas, to the relief of just about everybody.

Now, watching the Obamas do the same thing, I felt sorrow, admiration, fondness—but also gratitude that they no longer had to endure the public spectacle of the transition, handing over power with a smile, with great dignity, to a man who had shown very little. I don’t remember an election in my lifetime in which people talked about “the peaceful transition of power,” yet now it’s invoked constantly, as if avoiding bloodshed or ballot-stuffing strongmen is a great virtue. It’s the equivalent of asking someone how she is and she says, “Able to take nourishment.” Watching the helicopter, I also felt a strange, grudging respect for George Bush.

On Amtrak, a woman called out, “Who’s going to the march?” She held up her phone for a photograph, and about two-thirds of the passengers raised their hands and whooped. A burly, mustachioed conductor called out, “Here’s to a woman President—and soon!” Everybody cheered.

In D.C., by the Mall, with the Capitol in the distance, men in fatigues stood around Hummers. Venders, showing great American capitalist instincts, sold Trump and protest merchandise from the same stand. There and inside Union Station, a conflagration of MAGA hats, pussy hats, camo hats, a Pokémon hat. “It’s very unfair!” a young white man in a Trump hat said to another. (I didn’t ask.) Little boys waved Trump flags. A woman carried a sign that said “REVOLUTION IS NOT A ONE-TIME EVENT.” A Trump-outfitted guy had accessorized with patterned socks: sharks. A woman in an “I’m an Adorable Deplorable” button complimented a Democrat’s lunch: “Ooh—good-lookin’ salad!” A small marching band, in pink, carried a tuba that said “BEAUTY IS NOT POWER.” The Inauguration had drawn an estimated third of what Obama had drawn, in 2009; some violence broke out around K Street and Twelfth; much of the rest was, as we’ve heard, peaceful. Today, we march.

Sarah Larson is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her column, Podcast Dept., appears on newyor­ker.com.